How to Make Music With AI (2026 Guide)

AI music generators are doing the heavy lifting now. Songwriting, producing, mixing, mastering — tools exist for all of it. In this guide I am walking through every step of making music with AI in 2026, from the platforms worth your time to the actual workflows that produce usable results.

One caveat before we dive in: people assume quality equals success. It does not. Hits happen because the creator has a massive following or loads of cash behind them. AI can help you make a track that sounds like it should be famous. Whether it gets there is a completely separate problem, and that problem is getting harder now that millions of people can crank out decent music.

The Big Three: Suno, Udio, and ElevenLabs

The AI music generation space has completely transformed since 2024. Three platforms dominate: Suno, Udio, and ElevenLabs Music. Each has strengths. Each has problems. And major record labels have sued two of them for copyright infringement — though both have now entered deals with labels, which raises questions about where these tools are headed.

I have tested all three extensively. Here is what actually matters.

Suno: My Go-To for 2026

I have become predominantly a Suno user. Their output quality has surpassed Udio in most genres, and more importantly they are reliable. You know what you are getting.

Suno gives you 50 free credits daily, which works out to about 10 full songs. The interface is straightforward. And here is the feature that matters most: you can export up to 12 separate instrument stems. That means you can pull out the AI-generated drums, bass, vocals, whatever, and drop them straight into your DAW for real production work.

Suno is also fantastic for smoothing out rough demos, particularly janky vocals. This makes it incredibly useful for lyric swap workflows where you need to polish AI-generated or RVC-processed vocals.

The catch? Suno has heavy content moderation for copyright. It is really only good for lyric changes on songs it does not recognize — unless you get creative with your approach.

Udio: The Former Champion

Udio used to be incredible. The team from Google DeepMind built something special back in 2024. But something happened. Users are reporting a massive drop in quality. Vocals turn to gibberish. The music sounds generic. One user put it perfectly: “you can hear the creativity drop.”

I would argue that in most cases, Suno has surpassed Udio on audio quality at this point.

That said, for one specific use case, Udio remains unbeatable: vocal inpainting. If you need to change specific sections of an existing song while keeping the melody and vibe intact, Udio's remix and inpaint features are still my top pick. The downside is Udio makes it annoyingly hard to download your outputs, which pushed many creators toward Suno.

ElevenLabs: The Premium Option

ElevenLabs entered the game late (August 2025) but came prepared. They are the only platform that licensed their training data before launching. No lawsuits. No legal drama.

The audio quality is pristine. Studio-grade 44.1kHz output. The vocals may be the best I have heard from any AI platform, which makes sense — they have been doing AI voice synthesis longer than anyone.

The problem is cost. Generate a few variations of a 3-minute track and watch your credits evaporate. In 2026 I use ElevenLabs primarily for sound effects and spoken dialog rather than full music generation.

The Industry Reality Check

Here is the uncomfortable truth about AI music in 2026: only the big companies can survive the infrastructure costs. Musicians are not willing to pay what it actually costs to run these services.

Case in point: Weights.gg shut down. Despite having a strong community for RVC voice cloning, the ML costs simply did not align with what creators would pay. It is a cautionary tale for the entire space.

Both Suno and Udio have made deals with major record labels. Labels have money, and these AI companies had no choice but to bend the knee. What this means for the future of these tools as genuinely useful creative platforms remains to be seen. I wrote more about why AI vocals still fall short of matching original singers if you want the technical breakdown.

AI Songwriting: Getting Lyrics That Work

The tools for songwriting have gotten scary good. But there is still no button that writes a hit from scratch.

Suno's ReMi Lyric model performs better than most integrated lyric writing tools across AI music platforms. But ChatGPT or Claude remains my go-to for finalizing lyrics quickly. Feed it a concept, mood, and genre. It will generate dozens of options. Most will be garbage. Some will surprise you.

Pro tip: Generate 10x more lyrics than you need. Cherry-pick the best lines. AI is a volume game — quantity leads to quality. For melodies and chords, I still use my own brain. Humming original ideas helps you stand out from a crowd using only AI-generated melodies.

Production, Mixing, and Mastering

No AI can turn a melody into a radio-ready production automatically. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something. But honestly — it is getting close. And in many cases like comedy or social media content, production quality does not matter nearly as much.

AI Vocals That Sound Human

For creating vocals from scratch, you have two powerhouse options. Synthesizer V has been around longer and is rock-solid. Import MIDI, assign pronunciation, export.

The newer player is ACE Studio. They offer 80+ royalty-free AI singers, MIDI-to-vocal conversion, and even an AI violin model. Their VST plugin integration is smoother than Synthesizer V, which matters if you live in your DAW. Both tools let you control pitch, emotion, vibrato, and breathing at an insane level of detail.

I do not use them personally. They are very time-consuming to program and I would rather just sing it or use the vocals generated by something like Suno.

Mixing and Mastering

Quick reality check: good mixing will not save a bad song. Neither will mastering. That said, iZotope remains the best AI-assisted option for polishing AI outputs. Their Neutron plugin analyzes your track and suggests EQ, compression, and other settings. Not perfect, but a solid starting point.

For mastering, iZotope's Ozone is my pick. The AI gives you a baseline master that you can tweak. Way more control than fully automated services like LANDR. LANDR works if you have zero mastering knowledge or just need something quick, but you are stuck with whatever it gives you.

Actually Using These Tools: Real Workflows

Theory is nice. Practice is what matters. Here is how to actually make music with these tools.

The Suno Speed Run

• Type a prompt like “energetic punk rock anthem about corporate burnout”
• Hit create. Get two full songs in 30 seconds
• Pick the better one
• Use Custom Mode for more control — add your own lyrics with tags like [Verse], [Chorus], [Bridge]
• Export stems if you want to polish in your DAW

That is it. You have a song. Is it perfect? No. Is it usable? Absolutely.

The Hybrid Approach (My Favorite)

• Generate ideas in Suno (fast and reliable)
• Export the best stems
• Import into your DAW and replace weak elements with your own recordings
• Mix properly, then master with iZotope

This combines AI efficiency with human creativity. Best of both worlds. Sometimes I will combine multiple Suno ideas in my DAW, export them as a Frankenstein take, upload that back into Suno, and use their Cover feature to get a smoothed-out result. Then export the stems for a final mix.

The Lyric Swap Workflow

For changing lyrics on existing songs, there are two main strategies:

Strategy 1: Pure AI. Works best for smaller changes where most original lyrics stay intact. Use ChangeLyric first to get a rough track without content restrictions, then do an additional smoothing pass in Suno. Keep in mind that Suno is heavily moderated for copyright — it really only works on songs it does not recognize.

Strategy 2: RVC Conversion. Better when almost all lyrics are changed. Hire a singer or sing it yourself, then use RVC conversion to make the vocal sound like the original artist. Suno is a good way to smooth out and improve RVC outputs. Previously, you could skip the RVC pass entirely by using Suno personas, but Suno has disabled personas for audio uploads. ChangeLyric's V3 engine now offers a similar vocal cloning capability that can replace the persona workflow. I have written more about the best approach to changing a vocalist with AI if you want the full comparison.

If you are curious what the full lyric swap process looks like from start to finish, check out the lessons from 600+ lyric swap projects.

Cover Art and Visuals

Your song needs artwork. Midjourney is still an excellent choice for album covers and promotional art. Generate 10+ variations with a detailed prompt, pick the best one, and refine it with AI image editing tools like Google's Imagen or Nano Banana.

For final touches, Photopea (a free Photoshop alternative) handles text overlays and minor edits. Upscale to 3000x3000 for streaming platforms. One warning: AI still struggles with text in images, so avoid putting your album title directly in the AI-generated art.

The Legal Landscape

Major record labels sued Suno and Udio for copyright infringement, alleging they trained on copyrighted music without permission. Both have since entered deals with labels — which may limit what these tools can do going forward. ElevenLabs avoided this by licensing everything upfront. Higher cost, zero legal risk.

If you are making music for fun, use whatever you want. If you are building a business, consider ElevenLabs or wait to see how the label deals shake out. For editing existing songs or creating custom versions, make sure you understand where your rights start and stop.

The Trend Toward Simplicity

One positive note for 2026: things are becoming less technical. You no longer need deep audio engineering knowledge to get good results. In many cases you can skip complex workflows like RVC vocal cloning entirely and still get usable demo-quality results.

The barrier to entry keeps dropping. That is good for creators. If you want to experiment with changing song lyrics and vocals using AI, try ChangeLyric — it handles lyric modifications on existing songs with no content moderation restrictions. Or if you want a birthday surprise or a custom track for an event, the custom birthday song guide breaks down how to personalize lyrics for any occasion.

Time to Make Some Music

AI music generation in 2026 is not perfect. But it is good enough to be genuinely useful. The tools exist. The quality is there. Stop reading about it and start creating.

Do not want to deal with any of this yourself? I offer done-for-you lyric changing services through ChangeLyric. Same workflows described here, solid results, no learning curve. Or jump into ChangeLyric's dashboard and start experimenting on your own.